Mileage Milestone!

This past Saturday we ran the FARTHEST either one of us has ever run before! Mileage milestone!

It was kind of shocking because for the first time in a long time we stepped outside and were kind of chilly! Nonetheless, we had our camelbaks, our fuel and the tunes to entertain us!

The previous Saturday we started out on our 15 mile run [ultimately we only ran 11 miles of it] and I know both of us walked away from it feeling defeated and how we’d really make it a whole marathon! After running the 17 miles on Saturday we realized that the previous Saturday it was 1. a hot day again and 2. we hadn’t paced ourselves accordingly for all of the hills in our course. So in an effort to complete the 17 miles we knew we needed to give ourselves a flatter course this week.

Ok – back to the 17 mile run! We had our flatter course and positive attitudes that we would put in the exact mileage we were scheduled to run this week [Marathon Training week 9]! Rarely do either of us walk when we ran, we just lack the ability to get going and for a long time after walking. However, on this run we may have had to take a short potty break after only going about 2 miles, but we were barely in the run so starting up again was no big deal! When we were in mile 4 of our run we were running towards a group of about 8 women, as we got closer they all parted and moved off the sidewalk so the two of us could just keep on going. When we were close to them we realized they were out training for the 3-Day for the Cure and they started cheering & encouraging us on in our running! It was so neat since it happened to be October 1st and they were training and sporting breast cancer awareness shirts and what not.

We actually saw quite a few people out walking or running that morning and when we were in our 8th mile we ran into [not literally] the same ladies again. We got more cheers and encouragement from them! They really were great and it was such an unexpected awesome thing added to our training run. It was just extra inspiring since we are doing our #TeamCindy fundraising and they are walking for the same cause!

It was somewhere around this point that one of us said – I wonder if people think we actually talk to each other while we are running, you know, since we don’t. Which then led to us being the chattiest we have ever been on a run before besides the occasional “we’re half way finished!,” or “do you want to go this way?” We talked about running New Years Double, and wanting to do the Coast to Coast challenge in 2012. It was also around this point that we busted out our fuel for the day – swedish fish!

After hearing multiple times swedish fish are a great source of fuel for your long runs, which I think this can mostly be credited to Katie. Just in case we did not care for them while running we each took a GU gel out with us, but the swedish fish were good! Definitely refueled us and since we put them in individual baggies they were easy to grab from our camelbaks and continue running while eating. We’ve got quite a few more long runs so if you have any other fuel suggestions we’d love to hear them!!

We finished up our 17 miles exactly where we started and were immediately ready to lay down. In the last mile or so Teal started to feel some man in her achilles which kind of altered her running stride to make it through the pain and mile 17. This is what we look like after running 17 miles –

After our run Teal had to get to work at MowerMedic, and Beth opted to try out an ice bath. Thanks to Heidi, for all her tips & tricks to not feeling completely tortured during an ice bath! It completely worked and made a huge difference in the ol’ legs that day and the next day. Definitely did not feel like I’d done 17 miles! We are pretty proud of ourselves! Next week we are on to our next mileage milestone of 18 miles!